THE Scottish producer behind hit film Mad Max: Fury Road has called for Scotland's national film school to be given more public funding.
Iain Smith, who has also produced movies The Fifth Element, The A-Team and Wanted, also claims funding methods for Screen Academy Scotland have to change if local talent is to flourish.
His comments came as the academy's director Robin MacPherson revealed that the school's direct public funding has dropped by around 50 per cent since it was set up ten years ago.
Speaking at an event marking the 10th anniversary of the academy, Smith, originally from Glasgow, said: "Over the past ten years the entire UK film industry has benefited hugely from Scotland having its own national film school.
"Screen Academy Scotland graduates have been nominated at the Oscars, won dozens of BAFTA awards and outshone literally thousands of their peers to compete in Cannes.
"All this has been made possible by the support of industry and by a relatively modest amount of public sector funding. However, compared to other national film schools that funding remains very meagre.
"So it's now high time that the academy was put on a more secure footing, giving it the resources to be able to plan ahead.
"The talent is clearly here - let's make sure we give them the time, the space and the tools to shine even more brightly."
Currently, the national school - a collaboration between Edinburgh Napier University and Edinburgh College of Art - receives a mix of public funding from the Scottish Funding Council and Creative Skillset.
However, Mr Macpherson, whose 10-year tenure as director will end in July, claims public funding for the school has greatly diminished since he took up the role.
To counter this, the academy has boosted its income by running short professional development course, but Mr MacPherson says he would now like to see more stable income, allowing the school to plan ahead more effectively.
"The UK National Film School is directly funded by the Government and they get a much higher level of funding per student," he said.
" If we are going to have a national school in Scotland, it also needs to be supported well per head.
"Scotland deserves a national film school and we can't do that on the cheap, it has to be well resourced."
A Scottish Government spokesman said Creative Scotland has awarded £110,000 to Screen Academy Scotland since 2011-12, adding that public sector investment in the screen sector has increased from £16.2 million in 2007/08 to more than £21 million in 2013-14.
The spokesman added: "The Scottish Government and its agencies recognise and value the vision and the ambition of Scotland's screen sector.
"We have demonstrated great support for the film industry in Scotland and we are committed to working together to create the conditions to enable the sector to flourish."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article